My girl and I are getting married on Sunday, and we're
writing our own vows. This is nerve-wracking because her family is HUGE
and most of them live out of the state and hardly know me, so I can't go up
there and do my schtick and look like a jackass lest I want 5 brothers and 5
sisters thinking that their baby sis married a jagoff. ALSO, she's a
teacher so she'll probably know if I do something dumb like start a sentence
with an adverb. Any suggestions?

I wouldn't do homemade vows.
Lots of couples write their own, and instead of looking cute they usually
end up sounding obnoxious. "Ginnifer,
I vow to never hog all that Sicilian pistachio gelato you love LOL." Groannnnnnn.
Don't write out vows like you're captioning a fucking Instagram. Don't bother trying to be funny because
everyone tries to be funny at weddings—the best man, the maid of honor, the
officiant—and it gets tiring after a while.
It's all right to be the one non-comedian in the house given that you
are making a series of blood oaths for life.
So take them seriously. Vow the
shit you really want to vow: love, acceptance, tolerance, etc.

Here are some sample vows
that do the job without being insufferably adorable about it. It's not unromantic to steal these vows. You aren't a thoughtless prick for using
them. You were just smart enough to
stick to the classics because the concept of marriage itself doesn't exactly
need embellishment. You know why you're
there, so say it plainly and directly. I
LOVE YOU AND I WON'T FUCK OTHER PEOPLE AND I SWEAR I WON'T HATE YOU WHEN WE'RE
BOTH YELLING AT THE KIDS A DECADE FROM NOW.

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A lot of homemade vows are vain—like a New York Times wedding announcement
performed live. You don't just get vows
from these people... you get SPEECHES.
"Dorothy, when we first met at that NoHo handbag gallery, I knew there
was something special was between us..." BARF. When do we get to the cocktail hour? You're holding guests hostage just so you can
show off how special and unique your love is compared to everyone else. I will leave that wedding PRAYING for your
marriage to fail and for the bride to run off with her Zumba guru.

Marty:

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Do you foresee a day in the not-so-distant future where
sprinters or speed skaters or any athletes worried about their speed will eat
large quantities of beans the morning before a race so that their farts help
propel them to 1/100th of a second faster times? Could a healthy fart in
the middle of the 100m dash give someone like Bolt a faster time?

No, because the jet propulsion of a fart would be negated by
Bolt's abdominal discomfort. A fart is
usually not effortless. You have to adjust
your body to release it—raise a leg, stick your ass out, stand wider so that
your cheeks are spread, etc. That's part
of the CEREMONY of farting, a little moment I always relish before making with
the stinky.

That slight adjustment is something no track star or speed
skater wants, given that they spend years and years honing a fluid, hitch-free
running motion. And even if the fart
came out with minimal added movement—like when you fart while doing a leg
press machine or something—a fart is a legitimate mental DISTRACTION that's
difficult to ignore. How are you gonna break
the land speed record when you're busy worrying if Tyson Gay could smell your
fart in the next lane over? What if he
tells girls about it? You need to be
FOCUSED. You can't have farts getting in
the way. I bet you that track stars and
speed skaters plan their diets to avoid farting. No beans.
No fiber. Just bread and bananas
and clumps of wet flour.

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Zuck:

When I'm rolling my sleeve up before wiping my butt, I
imagine I'm about to tie off and shoot some sweet, sweet heroin like I'm in a
Tarantino movie. Am I the only one that does this?

Be sure to give your firearm a vigorous slap (SLAP!) and
make a fist so that you can find a tappable vein. They make you do this whenever you have to
get an IV put in and it never fails to make me want a syringe full of brown
heroin shot right through my bloodstream.

Matthew:

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Would an NFL 2 work in the offseason? Same teams. Same
stadiums. Different players and coaches. The reason other spring football
leagues fail is people are unfamiliar with the teams, so it's hard to get
behind them. But if folks in Green Bay can wear cheese heads 12 months a year
they'll do it.

I don't agree. I
think football has a natural wearout factor, just like anything else. This is why people bitch and moan about
Thursday night games... because it stretches the bounds of their tolerance,
particularly when the game isn't a good one.
I've written this before, but part of the NFL's appeal is that, unlike
the NBA or hockey or baseball, it doesn't require a huge time commitment. If you add more and more required viewing
hours, you diminish its appeal. Because
I have games of Candy Crush to catch up on!

Plus, you would know instinctively that the NFL2 was an
inferior product. You would know the
coaches and players were different, just like when you tried to watch the XFL
and gave up after three minutes. There
are a lot of people who have bet and lost on professional spring football, and I've
done my best to support their efforts because baseball bores me. But even I can't stick with it. I feel like I'm watching pro rodeo or
something. It's fucking AWFUL. It's like preseason football times nine. You can feel your time being wasted. You'd rather save your energy for the fall,
when the big boys come back.

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And as much as I hate to see the NFL go away for half a
year, I kinda need it to. I must follow
Greggggggg's orders and use the offseason for spiritual growth! If they magically found a way to televise 52
weeks of quality pro football a year, nothing would get done and all of us
would end up getting divorced. You need
a break. You need to spend a few months
building up anticipation so that the game feel fresh once September rolls
around.

Anon:

How do I appropriately respond to this Michael Sam business
when it comes to morons on social media? Many of these morons are people who I
have ongoing personal/business relationships with.

I think you just have to ignore it. Everyone has a Facebook friend or two who is
WAYYYY too enthusiastic about sharing their political and moral beliefs, and
for some reason these people always assume that you will agree with them. This is not a liberal or conservative
thing. This is a general asshole-ism
issue, when a guy is like "CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS OBAMACARE SHIT?!" on
Facebook and just expects everyone else to march in lockstep. Much better to engage in a flame war with
someone you never have to look in the eye.

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This is why Facebook has an option for hiding people's
status updates (you have to wade through Facebook's mandatory eight layers of
horseshit to find it, but it's there), so you can gracefully dump these updates
without them knowing. And then, when their
back is turned, you can say to a fellow co-worker, "Boy, that guy sure is
a dipshit on Facebook!" It's the
polite, WASP way of doing things.

Christian:

How much Hot Olympian Orgy Action is going to get
live-streamed only for the Russian police? Side question: If the Russian
police set up a Silk Road-type pay-walled site to stream that Hot Olympian Orgy
Action, how much more revenue could these games take in? Billions?

I dunno. Even by the
standard of porn film sets, Sochi hotel rooms are lacking. It would be hard for me to concentrate on two
athletes humping when there are stray dogs and exposed wiring all over the
place. It would be like the worst Nine
Inch Nails video ever. I need a touch of
class in there! I DEMAND MARBLE BATHS. It
shouldn't look like they filmed the scene in a crack den, unless that's a
fetish for you.

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Anyway, the fact that Russia's secret shower cams are no
longer secret has to make athletes more cautious about after-competition
relations, even if they
supposedly can't keep their hands off of each other. They're probably trying to fornicate in
unmonitored areas, like in restaurants and behind trees and under top secret
missile silos. At least initially. Perhaps a week from now, as the Games are
wrapping up and the scandals have dissipated and athletes are drunker and just
don't care anymore, they'll get locked inside an elevator and just go for it. Russian wiretappers are betting on them
letting their guards down.

Juan:

Who is a worse person: Kobe or MJ?

Oof. That is not easy
to answer. Actually, I shouldn't say
that. If you believe with all of your
heart that Kobe Bryant once got away with raping another human being, then
Bryant is the obvious choice. Michael
Jordan has never been accused of any similarly terrible crime. THAT WE KNOW OF. However, if you believe that Kobe Bryant was
innocent and was the victim of a simple anal misunderstanding, then you are
presented with what Craggs calls "a Sophie's Choice of assholes."

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I believe that Bryant still has the edge over Jordan because
Jordan was a cutthroat asshole FIRST and therefore has more charm. After all, when Bryant hogged the ball and
cursed out teammates and displayed a frighteningly sociopathic dedication to
winning, he was just copying MJ! WHAT A
DICK. The only reason that Kobe might be
a better person is because, with each passing year, we are learning more and
more about the depths of Jordan's flagrant dickishness: The bullying, the petty
feuds, etc. All of that was whitewashed
during the '80s and '90s. God only knows
what kind of shit he pulled when we weren't looking. I put nothing past Michael Jordan: smearing
feces on a mistress, having underlings thrown into rivers, sneaking fat pills
into Jerry Krause's Slim Fast shakes. One
day we'll know the whole story. But for
the time being, Kobe is the worse person.
They're both soulless assholes, but MJ was an asshole with STYLE.

Dustin:

What individual artist has most often had their work be the
last thing a person hears or sees before dying? My vote is for a prolific
country artist. My guess is George Strait. He has had so many number ones and I
figure the country music listening folks don't always wear seat belts while
cruising in their Dodge Ram Cummins Diesel.

I think that George Strait's music is too new, relatively
speaking, especially now that dying consumers have so many options to choose
from while driving their Camaro off of an embankment. Back in 1850 or so, there were only five
songs around to die to. Artists got a
much better share of suicides and poisonings that way. You can probably go down the list of most
popular recording artists in history and extrapolate death tolls from there,
but for fun, here is how I would rank songs that have people have died to the
most:

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"Amazing
Grace" (written 1779)

"Ave
Maria" (written 1825)

"White
Christmas"

Something
by Beethoven

Something
by Mozart

"My
Way," Frank Sinatra

That
one Italian opera in the Untouchables
that they sing when Nitti guns down Sean Connery. Nitti was such a dick.

"The
End," by The Doors.

Imagine being the asshole who dies with a Doors song
playing. I'd send MYSELF to hell. As for visual artists that have played in the
background during people's final breath, I'll go with Gene Hackman. Gene Hackman was in a lot of movies and old
people like him. I bet he's been there
thousands of times when Gram-Gram goes off the respirator.

HALFTIME!

Bryan:

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How many clones of yourself on the court at the same
time would it take to beat an NBA team? (i.e. 8 on 5, 15 on 5).
Assume no telepathy powers.

I like that you added telepathy in there because of course
clones have telepathy otherwise.

I don't know that any number is sufficient because, at a
certain point, having too many teammates probably works against you. That's just one more body to dribble around,
and I can't dribble for shit. If you have
20 teammates, which ones knows the pass is for him? Who's to say those clones won't all go
running into each other like morons when going for a rebound? No matter how many cloned teammates I might
have on the court, the simple act of an inbounds pass would be terrifying with
LeBron James up in my shit. I would just
drop the ball out of pure fright, turn it over, have twenty of my clones
posterized simultaneously, and then shit my pants all over again.

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The only way I think I could prevail is if I packed the court
ass-to-ass with carbon copies of myself.
Like, literally no room to move.
Then I would just try to pass it where I didn't see a Heat jersey, work
the ball to the end of the court, shoot a layup, and basically forbid the NBA
team to even move thanks to my side fat.
A regulation NBA court is 4700 square feet. The average human being takes up 1.5 square
feet of surface area, so call it 3,133 clones of myself. Our team name would be the Fire Hazards. Actually, double that total. I'll have each clone have another clone
sitting on its shoulders.

/finger wags at BronBron

Brian:

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How long until marriage no longer exists? Do you think
there's anybody alive today who will live in a world where marriage is a thing
of the past? I figure between the declining number of people active in religion
and the increasing number of kids growing up with separated parents, it isn't
impossible for marriage to be extinct within a hundred years.

No way. A hundred
years? Not a fucking chance. The only thing that will end marriage for good
is sexbots, and even then, we'll still marry our sexbots. Marriage has been around for millennia and
the reason why is because people are biologically drawn to the idea of having a
permanent mate for the sake of breeding and comfort and help with emptying the
dishwasher. That's not going away.

Even when we fail miserably, we keep trying it. And even when all of your guy friends are
like, "Bro! Why would you get
married?! SINGLE 4 LYFE BRO!", men
keep trying it. Men can't help themselves. Even guys who have been divorced five times
will propose a sixth time because they're stupid and never learn from their
mistakes and because they think proposing will get them bonus sexual
favors. We all suck at marriage, but we
all WANT to think it'll work somehow.
It's why I still vote even though I know democracy is tragic joke!

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Tim:

So I have a buddy who eats an entire Skittles bag one by
one. I'm fairly certain that is psychotic behavior. Even worse, he doesn't like
3 of the 5 flavors and just throws them out instead of mixing several Skittles
flavors together for the perfect taste of the rainbow. It is fair to assume he
is a psychopath, correct?

Marshawn Lynch does not approve. I don't know how any man has the willpower to
sit there with a bag of Skittles and eat them one by one over the course of...
what? Four hours? The only time this is acceptable is when
you're at a movie theater and you want to save the candy for the movie, so you
ration it during the previews only to give up three minutes in and swallow the
entire bag wrapper and all. Otherwise,
this is the work of a madman.

And throwing certain flavors out is morally wrong. There are children starving in India who
would love to have diabetes from those Skittles. And here you go tossing them out like it's
nothing? What a complete asshole.

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By the way, I think there comes a certain age when you never
need to eat a Skittle or certain other kinds of kid candy again. Like, if you're 35 years old and you're
walking around with a Laffy Taffy in your hand, something ain't right. You gotta evolve. You gotta move onto grownass man candy. Wait, that came out wrong...

Zach:

How do strip club DJs get hired and what's the hiring
process like? Do they get to sleep with the talent or are they professional
about it? And why do their voices always sound the same, with that deep,
douchey, sing-song inflection? Whenever I'm at my desk questioning the choices
I've made in life, my day gets 4% brighter when I say to myself, "Brandi
to the main stage, Brannndi".

GIVE IT UP FOR CRYSTALLLLLLL. I assume that every strip club DJ gets the
gig because he is either a friend or a relative or a drug supplier of the club
owner. It's not like they need someone
talented up there, like they need a headhunter to find jusssst the right guy. Any asshole can cue up "Girls Girls Girls"
in between doing bumps off a turntable he will never use. And yet those guys lord over the club from up
high like some sort of all-knowing douche Christ. That's not a cloud you're standing on,
brother.

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Anyway, since DJs control the playlist, they can probably
help strippers earn extra money by keeping them on the main stage longer with
an epic song like "Stairway to Heaven" or "Mountain Jam" or
the complete works of Vivaldi. But only
if Brandi PLAYS BALL, if you know what I mean.
These are not good people. I bet
every strip club DJ has GHB ready in their pocket at all times.

Mike:

What % of Olympic medals have not been worn during sex? Has
to be low single digits, right? They're basically guaranteed fuck
ornaments.

That's something a male athlete would automatically do
because every man treats sex like a coronation anyway. LOOK AT ME I AM KING. Never mind that the medal would dangle so low
from your neck that it would probably smash into your partner's face with each
successive thrust. Michael Phelps almost
certainly doesn't give a shit about that.

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As for the female athletes, they probably prefer intercourse
without a piece of cold metal sliding around their breasts. Or maybe they do. I dunno.
I'm sure Tiger has demanded Lindsey wear her medals. Then he throws a hundred dollar bill at her
and walks out of the room when he's finished.
I say that 45% of medals have not been worn during sex.

Dave:

Is every movie someone's favorite movie? If we restrict it to wide-release only, I
think it's a good possibility this is true. Even shitty movies from big studios
get seen by tens of thousands of people, and for some people it could be the
only movie they have ever seen and thus their favorite by default, or maybe one
line really resonated with them, or there was a nude scene that will stick with
forever, or maybe they're just stupid. For the thousands of people who thought Inception was their favorite movie after
they saw it, there must be a couple who think Austin Powers 3 was the height of cinema.

I think it's unlikely, and I say that knowing that some
people have awful taste in movies, and not just Grierson and Leitch! Take pro
athletes, for example. Pro athletes
like the worst fucking movies ever. The
average baseball player's DVD collection probably has TWO copies of Meet the Spartans ("Hilarious, bro!"). Whatever movie they saw last is automatically
their favorite movie ever.

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But no, I refuse to believe that there's someone out there
who thinks Drop Dead Fred is the
height of cinematic achievement. There
are too many bad movies out there for each one to find a permanent, loving
home. It takes a lot to say that ONE
movie, above all others, is the best you've ever seen or ever will see. And there are enough worthy candidates like The Godfather out there to ensure that Color of Night gets left out in the
cold.

I don't think I can even tell you what my favorite movie is
anymore. I'm just picking one out of a
hat if you ask me, really: The Fugitive,
Miller's Crossing, Empire Strikes Back, etc. And chances are, I'm picking some left-field
choice just to look all cool and hip.
There are nuances to Roberto Begnini's Pinnochio that only I can
see.

Yizzy:

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Would you rather live in the early 1900s and be one of the
richest people in the world and have all the knowledge about today's technology
and whatnot but obviously have none of it, or would you rather be some random
dude nowadays that's doing ok and has a decent wife a decent job and a couple
of decent kids?

The latter. Imagine
having Costas' pinkeye at the turn of the century. It's 50 drams of eye opium for you and
then a hasty death. It's not worth
feasting on beef wellington and beating preachers to death with a bowling pin
in your private alley on a regular basis.
I want maximum future-ness out of my life, and today is as good as I'm
gonna get. I don't wanna go back.

Email of the week!

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SC:

The summer before my Senior year of college, my boyfriend,
"Grant" worked for the a company that put on shows in the downtown
"club district" area in a city in upstate New York. Every Thursday
night in the summer, the city closed a street and set up a stage and a tent and
hosted a big block party type event where faded 90's bands and American Idol
second runner ups played for free. He had been doing this for a few
summers and had gotten to be a gofer for the promoters and various figures that
got the bands to the event, and ended up taking care of the bands' various
needs.

I was interning at an auditing firm downtown, walking distance from the venue,
so usually my girlfriends and I would go hang out with Grant and sometimes get
to go back stage and get special access to different areas. This fateful
Thursday, Marcy Playground was playing, and I was excited to go since I could
at least remember one of the songs they played, which couldn't always be said
for every band that showed up. That particular day I had been crazy busy
and had been out of the office at a client, a marketing firm. The guy we dealt
with at the client was a dick, and made a fuss whenever one of the auditors
wanted to use the restroom, plus the (unisex) restroom was right in the middle
of a bullpen setup full of horny 20-something dudes, so naturally, we avoided
it.

I got out of work, stopped back at the office, took a pee,
put on some flats and went to the show with 2 other girls. Like usual, I drank
a few beers and ate a burger - nothing special, other than the fact that I
hadn't pooped since the day before.

Fast forward towards the end of the show, and I meet up with Grant, and he
tells us "Hey, come check out Marcy Playground's bus!" So, he
shepherds us under ropes, around barricades, through the "No access"
zone and onto their bus. Standard issue tour bus, smoked glass windows, lounge
area, beds, bathroom. Frankly it was a much cooler ride than I'd have expected
Marcy Playground to have. After we finish checking it out Grant tells us,
"Ok, you guys have to go, I need to get their food and drinks and stuff,
they'll be here in 10 minutes" so my two friends leave, and I start
to head out. By now, the beer, the burger, breakfast and lunch are making their
presence known, and I realize that I sort of had to go. Sort of had to go, now.
Like, now. The office is a 15-minute walk away. The concert port-a-johns are,
well, concert port-a-johns, and the bar bathrooms are gross and getting grosser
as the night goes on.

"Sweetie," I said, "I'm just going to use the bathroom before I
go, ok?" Grant made a face like he knew this was not something he
was supposed to allow, but he shrugged and acquiesced.

I walked to the back of the bus, opened the door, sat down,
sighed with relief and dropped the biggest poop I think I'd ever made. It was
stunning, like one of the 3-foot long sausages hanging up at an Italian
deli. "Wow, I didn't know I could do that!" I remember thinking
as I dropped the TP in the bowl, wincing at the smell. Relieved, I poked my
finger toward the flush button which I slowly realized had an piece of paper
taped to it "Out of order, do not use." My face flushed with
panic, and embarrassment and I bit my lip and tried to think of a way to fix
the problem. I pressed the button in a panicked, desperate stab. Nothing, not
even a gurgle of green water. I was sweating, and my mind was racing and I just
wanted to leave, so I ran the water in the sink for a while, washed my
hands, exited the john, and sweetly said said "Bye!" to Grant.
"Call me when you finish up, we'll be at McMurphys!"

I left the bus, head spinning and afraid that I'd get Grant
in trouble.

Later we met up at the bar and Grant, without me saying
anything, said, "Yeah, Marcy Playground is pissed. The bus is pretty ripe.
They wouldn't even eat dinner in there. They want to know who did it, but there
were like 10 people on and off the bus, so they have no idea."

Grant and I are now married, and he still teases me about
the time I blew up Marcy Playground's tour bus toilet.